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21st March 2011 - Calsonic Wind Tunnel Testing

Any race team will tell you that there is no such thing as ‘enough testing’. We certainly agree with this, which is why when we were offered two whole days at another wind tunnel we did not hesitate to accept such a generous offer! A student on the HND Motorsport Engineering course is an employee at the Calsonic Kansei corporation in nearby Llanelli, who told us of their facilities. Calsonic is a worldwide automotive corporation, specialising in vehicle cooling systems and design, as well as climate control systems and related technology.

One of the facilities at the Llanelli technology centre is a climatic wind tunnel. Where the wind tunnel at MIRA is designed specifically for aerodynamics, Calsonic’s is primarily designed for engine cooling characteristics, and the tunnel is capable of simulating any climate in the world at any time. We’re not interested in how our car can perform in minus 40 conditions however. What we’re interested in is how downforce loads taken from the data acquisition on the car compare with the loads from MIRA’s data.

We were fairly surprised to discover that the results were actually very close, which gives credit both to Calsonic’s wind tunnel and to our data acquisition and analysis. Unfortunately we were unable to complete the two full days because there was a technical issue with the wind tunnel, but we are hoping to return in the near future to help us with developing the new aero package further.